Today, winegrowers from the Visegrad Countries (Czech Rep., Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) face ever increasing challenges particularly concerning small and medium winegrowers. Most of them still manufacture their products according to traditional methods and the size of their vineyards varies from less than one hectare to few tens of hectares.
At present, two reasons contribute to the vulnerability of these small businesses. Firstly, small and medium winegrowers do not have adequate marketing skills and resources allowing them to effectively promote their product in the face of fierce competition both from national and foreign big wine producers. Secondly, the scarce diversification of their business makes them extremely sensitive to drops in production and/or sales of their product. This situation is especially felt in the Podkarpacie region (Poland), wine areas in East Slovakia (Slovakia), Southern Transdanubia region (Hungary) and Morava (Czech Republic).
It is therefore important to improve their marketing and also to promote wine tourism as an additional source of income. Single winegrowers most often do not have the critical mass to take action in these two fields on their own. A better and more effective result may be achieved by creating a common cross-border tourist product pooling small and medium wine producers from the Visegrad Countries.
The Visegrad Wine Route Project aims at promoting the creation of such a tourist product by developing the elements needed in order to allow it to be launched i.e.:
- a joint logo, slogan and layout;
- a multilingual website;
- a promotional brochure;
- a study tour for tour operators specialised in wine tourism and/or regional tourism (May 12th-17th 2013).
The partners will commit to continue the cooperation after the end of the project promoting among other joint promotion initiatives and common events.
